Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum. He co-chairs the American Bar Association Committee on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and serves on the program committee of National Robotics Week.

Over Christmas, I received a series 530 Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner from iRobot. It cleans the floor really well. But that is all it does. This year at the Consumer Electronics Show, iRobot revealed the prototype AVA. It is, essentially, an open robotic platform. Think of it as an iPad with a body. It has no dedicated purpose and, importantly, it has an API and will run software made by third-party developers.

Yes, apps for robots. This is a wonderful development, one that I predicted in a forthcoming essay in Maryland Law Review. As iRobot founder Colin Angle points out, "If you think of the thousands of apps out there: Which iPad apps would be more cool if they moved?" More importantly, would you not be more inclined to buy a personal robot that came with thousands of programs, with more on the way.

UPDATE: The New York Times published most of the rest of my comments on Bits Blog. Thanks!

I was quoted in a cover story in today's New York Times as saying, essentially, that law enforcement was "just trying to do their job" in pushing for greater subpoena power. This particular remark was an aside, made if anything to soften the impression that I was overly critical of the government. For instance, I lamented that consumers do not understand the state of the electronic privacy law and spoke about the dangers of dragnet or otherwise excessive surveillance. (Presumably I am one of the unnamed "[e]lectronic privacy and civil rights advocates" that worries "because the WikiLeaks court order gained such widespread attention, it could have a chilling effect on people’s speech on the Internet.")

I did not mean to imply that we should not push back against government and in fact praised Google and Twitter for having done so. I did offer that the government's purpose in pushing for greater surveillance power was not to erode civil liberties for its own sake, but in order to protect Americans by detecting and punishing crimes. But the gist of my remarks was that we need more protection, not less. Some of my talking points appear below for context.

Affiliate scholar Marvin Ammori offers eight good reasons why the United States should not prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. I mostly agree with Ammori’s analysis and write to emphasize one point: an Assange trial, regardless of outcome, would help the government gloss over one of the worst security breaches in modern history. And the First Amendment could supply this distraction’s brightest fireworks.

The website Wikileaks recently published hundreds of thousands of confidential State Department cables. These communications apparently reveal the details of conversations with, and personal impressions and assessments of, foreign leaders and diplomats. Many fear that the leak will undermine international relations in profound and unknowable ways. One of the unintended consequence of the leak, however, may be to strengthen the case for a national consumer privacy law.

UPDATE: As told to Jules Polonetsky over at The Future of Privacy Forum, Capital One was engaging in "totally random" rate changes that were not related to browser type. On the other hand, according to the Wall Street Journal, Capital One was at one point using [x+1] data to calibrate what credit card offers to show.

Just now I learned about an allegation against Capital One that the company offered someone a different lending rate on the basis of what browser he used (Chrome vs. Firefox). A similar allegation was made against Amazon, which apparently used cookies for a time to calibrate the price of DVDs.

Here you have a clear objective privacy harm: your information (browser type) is being used adversely in a tangible and unexpected way. It matters not at all whether a human being sees the information or whether a company knows "who you are." Neither personally identifying information, nor the revelation of information to a person, is necessary for there to be a privacy harm.

I am a law professor who writes about robotics. I’m also a big Paolo Bacigalupi fan, particularly his breakout novel The Windup Girl involving an artificial girl. So for me, “Mika Model” was not entirely new territory. For all my familiarity with its themes, however, Bacigalupi’s story revealed an important connection in robotics law that had never before occurred to me.

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"However, the FCC rules did establish that there is "a set of consumer expectations that were being met," said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. "Now we go back to a place where (ISPs) really have to do something egregious to get caught," not to mention concerns about what agency has the authority, he said.

“It’s fair to say that the people who are happy about today's vote are Comcast, Verizon, Charter and AT&T and not consumers," Calo said."

"But for others self-certification is “a very big leap”, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at University of Washington, who is arguing for independent audits. “I’m worried by the idea of a company saying, ‘We’re good.’”"

"One thing missing from the regs: any driving test to pass before letting the robot fly solo. Instead, companies will “self-certify” their vehicles. “That’s like me going to the DMV and saying, believe me, I’m an excellent driver,” says Ryan Calo, who studies robotics law at the University of Washington School of Law. “It makes me a little nervous, honestly.” He would rather see a common requirement, or at least have a third party check the cars out before they hit the public streets."

"California is not the first jurisdiction to pass rules governing the deployment of fully automated vehicles. Michigan has a law contemplating driverless fleets, and Florida has a law that its drafter says covers this, too. “But this would make California the most consciously permissive jurisdiction in the world,” says Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington who teaches a course on robot law. “I question the wisdom of self-certification, especially with players that are not as sophisticated. I think it would be wiser to have third parties audit the technology.”"

"In Rosenblat and Calo’s view, government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission need to more actively step up and investigate possible abuses by peer-to-peer platform operators. Earlier this year, Uber agreed to pay $20 million to the agency, which charged that the company’s advertising had misled recruits about how much income they could expect to earn as drivers. Still, they would prefer to see the FTC dig deeper, prying into their digital back-ends rather than relying on publicly posted documentation.

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U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.

The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology. The event is free and open to the public but requires registration. -

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The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology.

Simon Jack reports from Seattle on robots at work. From the Boeing factory where robots make planes to a clothes shop where a robot helps him buy a new pair of jeans. Plus Ryan Calo, professor of law at the University of Washington, grapples with the question of who to blame when robots go wrong, and whether there is such a thing as robot rights.

There are a million ways people might use drones in the future, from deliveries and police work to journalism. But in this episode, we’re going to talk about consumer drones — something that you or I might use for ourselves. What does the world look like when everybody with a smart phone also has a drone?

"“We don’t need to get to this crazy world in which robots are trying to take over in order for there to be really difficult, interesting complex legal questions,” says Ryan Calo, professor of law at the University of Washington, “That’s happening right now.”

Here’s a sample:

Privacy

“How do we make sure these drones are not recording things that they shouldn’t," Calo says, "and those things aren’t winding up .... on Amazon servers,or somehow getting out to the public or to law enforcement?"